Thought Beans Blog

The panic selling in Shangai set off a bloodbath in the Wall street and other stockmarkets across the globe. The stockmarkets were due for a correction & has finally happened. The rally has been on for a long time. 2 major reasons for black tuesday were Greenspan’s comment on the economy & fear of increase in the rates by Chinese bank. This large sell off has never been witnessed in the recent times. Indian bourses too fell on the eve of budget. But the speculation is still rife that markets will recover. The long term effects on the possible recession in the US is going to be a very horrible one for the developing economies. Order books in the US are going thin for goods & investors are looking for a positive outlook from fed chief. A clear outlook for the short term would help prevent such carnage

A few years back, many in India didn’t have money to buy vehicles. The waiting periods were years. But the liberlization has changed everything. Today the roads are choc a block of autos. Increased availability of loans, credit has changed the face of automobiles. Many car majors are planning investments in India. Quotas of High end cars are exhausted in a short time. The accidents have increased astonishingly. The production capacity is going to surpass demand in a few years. We need to have a proper policy for providing infrastructure. Railways should be provided to reduce the freight transport. Even though US & cities like Tokyo have more cars, they are managing it very well. Lets hope that infrastructure will improve in the coming days.

After the French and American revolution, the Green, IT & Mobile Revolution have come to occupy a very important place in our lives. Green revolution helped India acheive self reliance in Food production.IT revolution helped acheive growth, income & employment. MObile revolution helped connect people. These revolutions have placed India among major economies of the world. But still we are depending on foreign nations for technology. India can become a super power economically but technologically it will be difficult given the current rate of R&D, innovations. We need a Technological revolution to acheive self reliance in technology. Increase budget on R&D, get scholars from abraod for research, removing the beuracratic bottlenecks. China & other westren nations are 1000’s of years ahead of us. We certainly can’t catch up with them. So govt must formulate the policy for next Tech revolution.

The problems faced by the Jetblue during valentine’s snowing is much to be blamed in the way Jetblue handled the issue. Many people had to sit in the planes for long hours without proper food & air. This is not the first time such a problem has happened. During every snowfall travellors have to endure the long wait. Why not the companies cancel the flights & issue early warning. Now Jetblue is coming out with Customers bill of rights. Why was such a thing not done by the companies before. What did happen to all talk about customer satisfaction? Does customer satisfaction mean making customers sit in the planes for hours? The customers are made the scapegoat. Atleast the Jetblue should have made the customers to go back. This clearly shows lack of communication in the higher echelons of power.Hope the Congress comes out with some measures before airlines face a revolt.

After years of speculation XM & Sirius have announced pland of merger. But the merger syill has to be cleared by the FCC. The merger may be a win win for consumers as they will have more programming options. The satellite radio war has gone on for years with each trying to acquire new consumers at a higher cost per consumer. I belive it would have been difficult for both to continue further making profits & continuing the satellite radio war. One can expect the year ending 2007 would see more consolidation in the industry with sweeping cost cutting & more pressures on profits.

with rumors that Daimler would be selling the Chrysler unit, Who is going to be the biggest winner? GM, private equity companies, Chinese, Korean, Renault Nissan OR any guess? For GM, it has to evaluate the pluses & minuses. Chrysler dealers will be a big burden for GM. for outsiders the Dealership chain would be a big asset. US senators may not allow the control to go into Chinese or Korean hands. For GM, buying chrysler might prove to be a costly affair. For Renault Nissan it would be a golden egg. It will also integrate with Renault trucks business.

With the sale of MTR foods, one of Bangalore’s oldest brands has fallen into the foreign hands. No one had imagined MTR foods would get 450 crores. The surprising thing is while many Indian companies are making a purchase abroad, why not any Indian takers for this? What Orkla is going to do with MTR is still a puzzle & hwo they would fit Indian food products in to their Product line. Many patrons of MTR were shocked that even the MTR hotel is also sold in this process. To their surprise, it has been said that MTR is in the mayya’s control. There are lots of unanswered questions like why suddenly the sell off, why not to some US or UK company where there is a good market for MTR foods but to some Norwagian company. It is yet to be seen how orkla will utilize the MTR foods. Lets hope it will not mess up with the product line & introduce some thing else down the line. The sad part is one of the finest brands of kannadigas has been taken over by Norway company. May be Vijjay Mallya could have made a bid & retained the company in the Kannadigas hands.

The Google’s logo for this valentine has created a lot of buzz in the blogosphere. Google’s numero uno logo designer has left the L from Google making it into Googe. A chocolate dipped strawberry dripping into a G shape. The company even went into the extent of posting an explanation on the official blog. This shows how much command has google in the online world. While the blog expalins, how L (OR dropping of L) can be understood from the logo, how can a person without a lover can understand what Love is (OR L stands for love). While the designer must be commended for making the world know that L in google stand for Love. (does it?) The Googe logo has cretaed lots of ripples in the bolg world. This valentines day may not have brought those lovely feelings to atleast some like Google & Daimler Chrysler.

A few years back Gazprom was not a household name in Europe unlike BP, shell. But now Russain Gas Behemoth, Gazprom is increasingly becoming a House hold name in Europe. With the recen gas supplies cut off to europe, Gazprom made headlines. With vast reserves oil & gas, Russia is a major player in the world gas economy & inturn Gazprom is the source behind it. Gazprom is mainly controlled by Kremlin & most of the officials in Gazprom are from Kremlin. By threatning to stop gas supply to Europe & world market, Kremlin has found a new weapon it can use. The cut off of the gas supply has created ripples in the EU & resulted in heated debates of EU’s dependence on Russia’s gas. Many of the private players in the Russian oil & gas industry have left the scene & Gazprom has taken its place like the recent Shell exit from Sakhlain -2. Gazprom is a moneyspinner for the Kremlin. It is claose to becoming the 2nd largest company after Exxon Mobil. But larger dependence on gazprom for EU will spell problems in the future.

The new year saw a big acquisition business in India with almost $37 billion in the transaction. Vodafone has bagged hutch for a whopping $19 billion dollar. The outgp from India is mofre tahn the Vodafond deal coming to india. With this, india has become a leader in markets like Aluminium, steel, Mobile, etc.I had thought that Vodafone would rename the Hutch to Vodafone India. This has been partly supported by the article in todays leading Indian business paper. India is becoming a nation of big deals. Bharati & Reliance are in for soem tough competition from Vodafone. 2008 will mark the full battle for mobile business in India. The new year has started on a good note for Indian business. Sensex is zooming at a new high. With the budget, sensex is expected to reach 15000. Expect some more big ticket deals in pharma, IT in the coming days. Unexcpectedly, it is not IT but the non IT companies which are in forefront of big deals. In the recent days, Indian IT has not made any big IT deals. Automobile companies are also a major deal maker. Lets hope that Indian companies keep this trend.

While the increased oil prices is a shock for the rest of the world, for Middle eastern & other Oil producing nations it has come as a boom. The petro dollar is fueling the investment craziness in the Middle east. Once a desert town, Dubai is now the darling of the global investors. Every kind of Modren luxury is found in Dubai. The question here is there are other Oil producing nations in the world. Why are they not able to replicate the Dubai Magic in regions like Nigeria, Bolivia, Venezuvela & others. Where is all the Petro Dollar going in these countries? People in countries like Nigeria still break into petro pipelines for petrol theft. The Petro dollar in many african countries are plundered by the local govt for their own benefits.